by Lisa Yee
Bobby thought Huntington Gardens sounded like the kind of place a dog would enjoy. He was still thinking about dogs as his class filed into the auditorium. Assemblies were always exciting because you got to be someplace else. Bobby noticed that all the boys from Room 15 sat in one row and all the girls sat in another, right in front of them.
“Stop kicking my chair!” a girl snarled at St. James.
“It wasn’t me,” St. James said, looking shocked. When she turned around, he kicked her chair again. Then all the other boys kicked the chairs in front of them. Holly looked back and glared at Bobby. He pretended not to see her.
“All eyes on me, please!” Principal Coun stood on the edge of the stage. “Before our special guest Professor Science explains the mysteries of the universe, our newest PTA Lady has a special announcement….”
A few kids started giggling and soon the whole auditorium was roaring. Bobby had to crane his neck to see what was so funny. He gasped. As a large figure came onstage, Bobby quickly slumped in his seat and pulled his shirt over his head.
“Hello, everyone! I’m the newest PTA Lady! My name is Roy Ellis-Chan, but many of you know me as Bobby’s dad, The Freezer. Where is my kid, anyway?” Bobby sank lower into his seat. “Oh well,” Mr. Ellis-Chan continued, “I’m here to encourage all of you to buy homemade baked goods from the PTA bake sale. I’ll be manning the table with the other PTA Ladies after school starting on Monday. See you there!”
Like a turtle, Bobby poked his head out of his shirt to see if it was safe to come out. It wasn’t — his father was still onstage. Before he left, he did his famous freeze and growled. The entire audience growled back, even Principal Coun.
Bobby couldn’t remember a time when people weren’t growling around him. And if that wasn’t embarrassing enough, now this — his father was a PTA Lady.
* * *
After school, Bobby really needed someone to talk to. But who? Chess was bad at keeping secrets. Holly wasn’t speaking to him. His mother was at work, and his father was the one who he wanted to talk about.
Bobby watched Rover swimming up and down with Diver Dave. “Hey Rover,” Bobby called out. “Got a minute?” Rover headed toward his boy. For the longest time the two just stared at each other. Finally, Bobby began talking as Rover listened.
“It’s weird,” Bobby confided. “When my dad announced that he was a PTA Lady, everyone started laughing. I just wanted to disappear. Do you think I should say something to him or just pretend it doesn’t bother me?” Rover swam near the top of the water, then dove to the bottom and back up again. “I’m not sure what you’re saying,” Bobby told him. Rover circled twice around the tank before coming back. Slowly, Bobby nodded, then cried, “I get it! You’re saying I should circle around. Not be too direct. I know, how about I ask Dad about himself first? Then I tell him how I feel. Thanks, Rover, I’ll let you know how it goes!” Bobby was surprised at how easy it was to talk to his fish.
Mr. Ellis-Chan was in the kitchen scrubbing the counter when Bobby sat down at the table. “Hey, Dad? How come you stay home and Mom works?”
His father peeled off his rubber gloves, pulled up a chair, and sat across from Bobby. “Well, you know, after Sam Benzoni busted my knee in the playoffs a couple years ago, I had to stop playing football.” Mr. Ellis-Chan held out a plate of cookies. They looked like checker pieces — the black ones. “Sam’s nickname was The Freight Train. I guess a Freezer can’t stop a Freight Train!” Bobby noticed that even though his father was laughing, he didn’t look happy. “Then I had that job at The Locker Room, but, well, you know how that went too.”
Bobby nodded. Mr. Ellis-Chan had been the celebrity spokesman for a sports superstore chain. He even appeared in several commercials doing his famous Freezer growl. Then Sports Legends magazine did an article called “Where Are They Now?” In it, The Freezer was quoted as saying, “I always shop at van Straaten’s Sports Closet in Rancho Rosetta. It’s a small local store and the service is great!”
For a whole month after The Locker Room fired him, Mr. Ellis-Chan just sat in his Laz-E-Guy recliner and watched the videotape of Sam Benzoni tackling him over and over again. It was Mrs. Ellis-Chan’s idea that he become a stay-at-home dad. Except for the cooking and cleaning and laundry parts, he was excellent at it.
“Princess is still napping,” Mr. Ellis-Chan reported when he returned from checking on Casey. He poured Bobby a second glass of milk and then chugged what was left in the carton. “Being a full-time father is harder than playing in the NFL. There’s no boot camp for this. I’m still learning. Do you have any tips for me?”
Bobby wiped off his milk mustache with the back of his hand. “Um, maybe you can just make plain sandwiches for lunch, like creamy peanut butter, instead of the ones with faces.”
His father’s massive shoulders slumped. “You don’t like my Sandwich Faces of the Famous?”
“They’re really nice,” Bobby assured him. “But not for school. They’re too, um, distracting.”
His dad nodded. “Okay. Anything else?”
“How about calling yourself a PTA Dad, instead of a PTA Lady?”
“I thought it was sort of funny, but I can be a PTA Dad just as easily,” Mr. Ellis-Chan said, nodding again. “I’m trying my best, Bobby. If ever I start to mess up, you just tell me, okay?”
“Sure thing, Dad.” Bobby choked down another cookie and grinned. It was the greatest feeling spending time with his father, just the guys, the boys, the dudes….
“Daaaaad,” Casey yelled from upstairs. “Daddeeeee!!!”
Mr. Ellis-Chan pushed the whole plate of cookies in front of Bobby. “Well, it sounds like Princess is awake. I enjoyed our talk.”
“Anytime, Dad,” Bobby began. “I think —”
Before he could finish, his father was already bounding up the stairs.
Where does he pee?”
Bobby was practicing writing his name in fancy lettering and drawing a little picture of himself beside it.
“Where does who pee?” he asked. “Casey! Don’t tap on the aquarium, you’ll give Rover a headache.”
“Where does Fishy-fish-fish pee?” Casey pointed Wandee at Rover. “I don’t see a bathroom.”
“He pees in the water.”
“Eeewwwww!!!” Casey’s eyes grew big and she threw Wandee in the air. “Fishy-fish-fish is gross! Fishy-fish-fish swims in pee-pee!” she shrieked as she ran down the hall.
Bobby looked into the aquarium. Rover was now swimming in and out of his castle. Bobby dropped a pinch of fish food into the water. Immediately, Rover surfaced and gobbled it up. “Don’t mind my sister,” he told his fish. “She’s weird.”
Bobby picked up Wandee and stabbed the air with it like a sword. Then he noticed something odd. Rover was transfixed by the sparkly wand. When Bobby moved Wandee to the left, Rover moved to the left. When Bobby moved Wandee to the right, Rover moved to the right. When Wandee went up, so did Rover. When Wandee went down, Rover did too. It was as if Wandee were magical.
Bobby jumped up and down to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. He walked around the room and came back to Rover’s tank. Then Bobby waved Wandee slowly back and forth. His fish swam alongside it each time.
Bobby glanced at Mr. Huggums to see if he saw it too.
Rover could do tricks?
* * *
For the next week, Rover and Bobby worked on developing his tricks. At first Rover only followed Wandee, but eventually Bobby began training him to respond to hand signals. When he made a circle with his finger, Rover could almost do an underwater flip. Bobby was especially pleased when the fish started learning how to push a little plastic soccer ball. A couple of times he almost called Holly to tell her, then stopped himself when he remembered that they weren’t speaking.
One morning Annie pounded on his closed door. “Squirt, get your skinny self down to breakfast!” she yelled.
Bobby ignored her. He was in the middle of his morning talk with Rover. “You won’t
believe this, but yesterday Holly was with Jillian Zarr, and when I walked past them, Jillian Zarr whispered, ‘Where are your curlers?’ ”
Rover stopped swimming.
“I know!” Bobby cried. “She is so mean. And Holly’s the one who told her about the curlers. I wonder what else she’s told her about me?” His eyes grew big when he thought of all the secrets that Holly knew — like that when he was a toddler he bit the mall Santa. Or that he cried when he watched Old Yeller. Or that he had been chased by a cat, twice.
Bobby untangled Diver Dave from a piece of plant and tried to think of more pleasant things. “Hey, when I get home from school we’ll start learning how to swim through a hoop,” he told Rover. “We’ll also work on your zigzagging. Your zig could use some more practice, but your zag is excellent.”
Before leaving his room, Bobby slipped Wandee under his bed for safekeeping. “See you later!” he told Rover.
After a breakfast of lumpy homemade oatmeal, Bobby carried his mother’s briefcase out to the car for her. Mrs. Ellis-Chan opened the door to the cream-colored Volvo. Her car was always clean and smelled nice, unlike Mr. Ellis-Chan’s messy Mini-Max Hybrid with its weird musty odor.
“Bobby,” his mother said as she pressed some money into his hand, “this is for the bake sale. If your father’s cookies aren’t selling, I want you to buy some.”
Bobby nodded solemnly. “I will,” he promised. He knew how important the cookies were to his dad. For weeks Mr. Ellis-Chan had been perfecting his recipe.
As Bobby watched the Volvo head down the street, his dad joined him in the driveway. Casey was on his shoulders, blowing kisses to the passing cars. Mr. Ellis-Chan handed Bobby a plain brown paper sack. Cautiously, he looked inside. There was a peanut butter sandwich, a green apple, a juice box, and a black lump.
“Thanks, Dad. You’re the best!”
With Casey still on his shoulders, Mr. Ellis-Chan scooped up his son and gave him a bear hug. “Stop!” Bobby shouted as he laughed. “I’m going to be late for school.”
“Say hi to Holly for me,” Casey sang. “Holly! Holly! Holly!”
Bobby just nodded. How could he tell her that he hadn’t spoken to Holly for almost a week?
Tap tap. Tap tap. Tap tap. The sound of Mrs. Carlson’s heels was comforting, like raindrops against a window. Tap tap. Tap tap. Tap, tap, tap. Suddenly the noise stopped.
“Bobby, you have a wonderfully unique style.”
Bobby was startled to find Mrs. Carlson peering over his shoulder. The assignment was to draw the number-one thing you’d like to see at Huntington Gardens the next day. Bobby had considered drawing the lily ponds or one of the topiaries, but ultimately decided on the Koloff tree. In the brochure Mrs. Carlson had passed around, it said that the tree was very rare.
“Everyone, look at Bobby’s interpretation of the Koloff tree.” Mrs. Carlson held up his paper so the whole class could see it. “As we discussed, it’s the stickiest and smelliest tree in the world. Bobby has drawn it leaning to one side, as if it were lonely.”
Bobby paused. He had no idea he had drawn a lonely tree. But Mrs. Carlson was right, it did seem sad. It probably doesn’t have any friends, he mused. The poor Koloff tree.
Before class was dismissed, Mrs. Carlson reminded everyone, “Please bring a sack lunch for the field trip. And don’t forget your ‘Why Elections Are Important’ essays are due at the end of the week.”
After school, Bobby headed to the PTA bake sale. Casey was under the table giggling. She had just tied Jackson’s shoelaces together and he had fallen over. “Jackson, get up off the ground and stop playing around,” his mother chided him.
Jillian Zarr’s mom was the president of the PTA. She stood behind the bake sale cash box eyeing Mr. Ellis-Chan, who was arranging and rearranging the baked goods. One time at the grocery store, Mr. Ellis-Chan had sent Annie to get eggs. When she headed back to the cart, he jumped out from behind a potato-chip display and did his trademarked Freezer growl. Only he didn’t surprise Annie — he surprised Mrs. Zarr. She screamed and threw her eggs into the air, leaving a huge mess in Aisle #10. After that, whenever Mrs. Zarr saw Mr. Ellis-Chan, she flinched.
Bobby joined Chess in front of the baked-goods table. Chess wasn’t moving. Bobby suspected he was overwhelmed by the choices. Mrs. Zarr’s bracelets jangled as she recited, “… lemon tarts, marble pound cake, Rice Krispies Treats, oatmeal cookies, snickerdoodles …” She skipped over Mr. Ellis-Chan’s burnt cookies.
After long consideration, Chess selected a vanilla cupcake. He wiped off the frosting before taking a bite. “My palate is very sensitive,” he explained.
Holly and Jillian Zarr strode toward the boys. “Hi, Holly!” shouted Casey. She was still under the table. “Holly! Holly! Look at my new wand.”
“It’s beautiful!” Holly whistled. Bobby had always admired how well Holly could whistle. “What happened to Wandee?”
Casey’s smile turned upside down. “Wandee’s gone. Poof!”
Bobby pretended to be interested in a blueberry muffin.
“Hi, Mom.” Jillian Zarr waved. “Where are our brownies?”
“Sold out,” Mrs. Zarr replied, clearly pleased to announce this. The two of them looked alike.
“These cookies might be worth a try,” Mr. Ellis-Chan suggested to Holly. He offered up the burnt ones.
“Are they chocolate?” Holly looked hopeful. On Halloween Bobby used to trade his chocolate candies for her red licorice and JawBlasters.
“Well, er, no. They’re peanut butter,” Mr. Ellis-Chan mumbled as he put them back down. “They may be slightly burnt. That’s why they’re discounted.” He tried not to look disappointed when Holly chose a bag of chocolate chip cookies instead.
Bobby had been admiring the Rice Krispies Treats. The squares of gooey marshmallowy goodness had tons of sprinkles on them. Nearby were star-shaped sugar cookies capped with green icing, piles of coconut macaroons, and oatmeal cookies stuffed with raisins. As Bobby reached for a Rice Krispies Treat, he remembered his promise to his mother.
“Um, I’ll take these,” he said, grabbing a bag of burnt cookies instead.
Mr. Ellis-Chan nudged Mrs. Zarr in the ribs. She shrieked, then covered her mouth with both hands. “Those are mine,” he boasted. “Do you want to try one?” Hands still over her mouth, Mrs. Zarr shook her head. “Bobby,” his father said, “go ahead and give one to Mrs. Zarr.”
Bobby handed a cookie to Jillian Zarr’s mother. Reluctantly, she took a nibble, and when she thought no one was looking, she spit it out in a napkin.
Mr. Ellis-Chan pretended not to see this, and Bobby pretended not to see the hurt look on his father’s face.
“These are so different!” Bobby said loudly, dipping into his bag of cookies. Somehow he managed to smile as he chewed. Even though Bobby’s mouth felt like it had filled up with burnt cardboard, it was worth it to see his father grin.
* * *
The next morning Bobby got up early and bade Rover good-bye. He rushed through breakfast and tried to choke down the muffin his father baked. It had a strange mint flavor, like toothpaste. To wash away the taste, Bobby downed three glasses of milk. He slipped the rest of the muffin in his pants pocket so his dad would think he ate the whole thing.
Everyone from Room 15 was excited as they gripped their sack lunches and lined up on the sidewalk. The bus ride could be almost as much fun as the field trip itself. The boys scrambled to claim their seats. They all knew that if you weren’t fast enough, you could end up next to a girl, and then the whole day would be ruined. But, if you were superfast, you got to sit by a friend and be next to the window. Then you could make faces at the cars down below.
Bobby didn’t get a window seat. Still, he managed to grab a place next to Jackson, so at least he didn’t have to sit next to a girl and risk getting cooties. As the bus roared past the Rialto Theater, Mrs. Carlson had everyone sing “The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round,” first slow, then faster and faster, until
no one could understand the words.
By the time they arrived at Huntington Gardens, the class was all revved up. Mrs. Carlson quickly divided the students into tour groups. Bobby’s good news was that he was with Chess and St. James. His bad news was that Holly and Jillian Zarr were in the group as well — and Mrs. Zarr was their parent volunteer. Jillian Zarr and her mother were wearing matching green dresses and pointed shoes that looked like weapons. At least Holly had the good sense to wear sneakers and jeans.
The first stop for Bobby’s group was the Desert Garden.
“Wow, these cactuses are so cool!” St. James shouted as he pretended to be a cowboy riding an invisible horse.
“It’s cacti,” Jillian Zarr corrected him. “That’s the plural for cactus.”
St. James held his nose. “What’s plural for ‘you stink’?”
“Look!” cried Holly. “A pachypodium lamerei!”
“It looks like a palm tree to me.” St. James snorted.
“Read the sign.” Holly sounded exasperated. She took a photo of the tree with her disposable camera. “It’s also known as a Madagascar Palm.”
Suddenly Chess started leaping up and down. “OUCH! Ouch, ouch, OUCH, ouch, ouch!”
“Did you touch a cactus?” Jillian Zarr said accusingly. “I’ll bet you touched a cactus. Mommmmm, Chess touched a cactus!”
“It touched me,” Chess howled as he examined his bleeding finger. “I’m dying! Call an ambulance! Ouch.”
Mrs. Zarr frantically dug through her purse as the girls glared at Chess. Bobby noted that girls had two basic looks: angry and disgusted. When they yelled at you with their hands on their hips, it meant they were both. Chess had to suffer through wearing a Hello Little Ballerina Bear bandage on his finger. Still, it stopped the bleeding.
Holly consulted a map. “The Japanese Garden is this way,” she said, pointing. “Follow me and try not to get into any trouble.” She looked at Chess when she said this.